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I recently got an Audible subscription to pick up some science fiction classics that I missed out on reading during that time in my teens that I read 90% of all the books I have ever read.

So far I have listened to "Sirens of Titan" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" I liked each a bit.

Currently I am on "Neuromancer", which is not nearly as good. Would anyone agree with me that books are better with more dialogue and introspection, fewer descriptions of numerous details? Neuromancer is super influential and has its strengths but it is having a hard time sinking hooks into me.

I think my next one is going to be a full cast production of "Dracula" but this made me wonder what this hive mind considers a good starter list of science fiction classics. Please limit to 5 per entry, I want to be able to process suggestions meaningfully. And also, conversations on a topic as broad as "all of genre fiction" can get out of hand. So, you know, keep it tight.

I can't sign up to audible. When CGP Grey did his video and talked about a book, I decided I'd go try it out, but you need a credit card to get Audible in this country! I don't have a credit card so I can't use Audible, which is irksome to say the least.

I'm not sure what you mean by classic. Neuromancer was written in 1984 With Dracula being considerably older. Neuromancer was a bit disappointed when I first read it too but that opening line is quite memorable in my opinion.

There is a complete collection of Arthur C Clarke on audible but it tops out at over 51 hours. A lot of his stuff is worth reading but I wouldn't say all of it. A personal favorite of mine was The Sentinel it's only a 25 minute story but grew into 2001. So it's not the collection The Sentinel at least.

20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Vern is definitely a classic and holds up pretty well.


Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas By John Scalzi Is by no means a classic but it does do a spoof on the original Star Trek. While it doesn't necessarily mock but you deftly know who they're referring too. It's also read by Wil Wheaton. Still I would highly recommend it especially for Star Trek fan. Funny and emotional at the same time.

Alien: Out of the Shadows: An Audible Original Drama Deals with the classic film series and does actually an good job of bridging the first and second movies.

Not sure how well I did keeping it tight and I apologize if my suggestions are too useful.A lot of older science fiction at least in my experience seems to be more descriptions of details with less dialogue.Waystation for example is a great read but except for the last part of the book most of the dialogue is between a the main character and woman who doesn't talk and the main character and a mailman. I also tried to avoid serious.

Neuromancer I've been meaning to get to but someone recommended me Snow Crash so I started with that.

Eric wrote: 20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Vern is definitely a classic and holds up pretty well.

I actually have a hard copy of this audio book from when I worked at a book store. I can't recall where I left off.

There are two recommendations of books I read:
If you are into a SciFi/Horror type story with vampires I would recommend Brian Lumley's Necroscope. They are a symbiotic vampire and not like the Anne Rice/ Twilight Vampires. It also goes into the ESPer branches of British/Soviet Intelligence. It is a big book, so I don't know what size of book you were looking into.

I always like John Varley as a Sci Fi writer. I would start with Steel Beach and if you like that, you could find more books by him. I haven't read his more recent stuff he has written though.

Ok it's not really fiction but I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's The View From the Cheap Seats as an audio book.

lsgreg wrote:There are two recommendations of books I read:
If you are into a SciFi/Horror type story with vampires I would recommend Brian Lumley's Necroscope.

I added that to my list. Had to check if the performance on it was worth listening to.

I just wrapped up "will save the galaxy for food"

Rasp wrote:I just wrapped up "will save the galaxy for food"

Half way through that one myself. Space adventure in a time after instant transport has made space travel obsolete. Wonder if he got the idea from "into Darkness".

I give it a thumbs up so far, I'm a fan of Yahtzee's dry, sardonic style of humour. Only niggle I've had is that his voices for Mr. Henderson and Blaze are fairly similar.